Book 7, Chapter 95 - Genocide

Chapter 95: Genocide

Skies brightened in the east . Once again, light fell upon the land .

The blue shroud that hung over the earth was a striking aurora that persisted as the dawn came, but dulled . Warmer hues took over the wastes .

A graveyard of wrecked airs.h.i.+ps surrounded an outpost near Skycloud’s border . Plumes of black smoke rose from the town itself . Silence prevailed . No signs of life . No sound . Only stillness and the smell of death .

The air rippled, but like the waters of a still lake they were quickly suppressed .

Cloudhawk stepped out first . Using his own scouting relics he scanned the area for threats . As far as he could tell, there was nothing here . It was strange, though . What had happened? What was this uneasy silence? Despite the risks, he had to see for himself .

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Indeed the enemy was at the gates . They could pretend to be deaf and dumb, but that was weakness . What they faced now was only a fraction of the larger threat . It meant whatever waited for them out here should be tolerable . An opportunity to test what the enemy had in store .

Still, Cloudhawk was cautious . He elected to teleport here first, alone, and a.s.sess the situation . If it was safe then he would bring the others . On the other hand, if something went wrong it was easier for him to escape alone .

Immediately upon entering, Cloudhawk slipped between dimensions . He concealed his power and presence, ceasing to exist in this plane . He even curtailed his will in order to hide his mental signature .

Before even entering the settlement he knew things were bad . Yet even bracing himself for what he might find, the truth shocked him . It was like everything had been scorched clean by a storm of fire .

The roads, homes… everything was covered in a black coating like asphalt . What sickened him most was what happened to the people . He saw them everywhere, frozen in place like onyx statues . He saw the panic on their faces, the fear of their last living moments . Their agony was perfectly preserved in black stone . A forest of grotesque, genderless victims populated the dead city .

What had they suffered? A glint of silver flared from his left eye as he grappled with the question . The town’s doom had occurred not long ago, recent enough that his Eye of Time could reveal the calamity . Half a day was the extent of his view into the past .

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His eye glimmered . Cloudhawk peered into what was .

To his eyes it was as though everything were flowing backwards . With incredible speed the city was restored to its original state . He saw three G.o.ds descend from the sky in fiery impacts, a hundred times the speed of sound . The intensity of their landfall gave rise to a shock wave that devastated the town .

Its denizens stood around, mouths agape and appalled at the destruction as the three G.o.ds emerged from their craters . Each produced a box, seemingly from nowhere, and opened them as one . Together summoned a creature of smoke and ash .

Thus the terrible slaughter began .

The smoke monster swept across the town, sometimes long and thin and other times a roiling orb . A constant flood of dark energy poured from it and enveloped everything . People started to run, but were not fast enough to escape .

Nothing survived . Once the smoke touched them, its power entered every orifice . It drilled through their pores, infecting their skins and muscles and organs, turning everything to stone . This nightmare scene was what remained of their genocide .

It happened in the blink of an eye . Were Cloudhawk here, he doubted even he would have time to react . No signs of life could be felt from these statues, however there was still the faint hum of whatever energy consumed them .

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What were the G.o.ds planning?

He watched the G.o.ds as the terrible process unfolded . They paid the human coc.o.o.ns to mind . When the job was done, they called back the monster, rose into the air, and moved on . Probably to rejoin the other G.o.ds .

Was he too late? What was that terrible creature they commanded?

Cloudhawk approached one of the statues . He slowly made himself corporeal and extended a hand . The moment his fingers touched it, the poor soul’s features cracked and the whole thing fell to pieces .

“Aggghhh!!!” A terrible wail emerged, together with a translucent figure . It detonated near Cloudhawk, but the sudden attack was no threat to him . He blinked to safety .

The f.u.c.k? Spirits? G.o.ds can turn living humans into these things? But why?

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Cloudhawk scowled . Things were bad and the people were all beyond saving . He teleported away .

It seemed the G.o.ds had a way to transform humans into mindless, energy-dense spirits . That was a problem .  

His next stop was the capital itself . Before even arriving he knew he was one step too late . Skycloud, the once glorious city, was a thing of the past . Everything was now encased in the black stone that remained after an attack by that h.e.l.lish smoke beast . The city’s millions of inhabitants were all dead .

There was some evidence of combat that he could see . Some had tried to fight back, some had tried to run . A handful managed to survive the opening attack but were quickly silenced . Lurking on the outskirts, Cloudhawk remained invisible . He could sense a group of powerful beings within . G.o.ds .

A couple dozen G.o.ds had erased an entire realm in less than three hours . While the best of the realm was safe back in Greenland, this was still an unmitigated tragedy .

Cloudhawk was weighing whether to engage his enemies when he saw a group of humans fleeing across a distant hillside . They were being pursued by a group of spear-bearing divine soldiers . The survivors were about to be overtaken .

With a wave of his hand, G.o.dslayer appeared in Cloudhawk’s grip .

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